Here is a little bit of fun to start of your weekend. We have been listening to the Brad Mehldau Trio this week. They are a jazz trio using piano, bass and drums. They probably are one of the bigger names amongst the most recent of jazz groups coming out and we have really been enjoying them. The low key, soft sounds have really been nice to have as background. Anyway, I found this video a few days ago and I thought it would be a nice compliment to what we had been listening to. It is a jazz piece by John Coltrane called Giant Steps. The author of the video took the music and matched it with the sound of the music to create a really neat video where you can follow the music along with the sound to get an idea of how they match.

Have a great weekend!

Today, the students made it to 30 mins sustained reading. It was incredible!!! The students each have a box of books that have been leveled to their reading level. These are the books they are using for our Daily 3 program. Every week, students get to pick new books to add to their box based on their improvements in reading. The kids are really into the program. It so wonderful to see students really getting into reading. We will be starting our Home reading program soon once Thanksgiving is out of the way.

In their writing, we have been working on writing stories based on the book, “If You Give A Pig A Pancake”. We recently worked together as a class on a story as an example. You can see it below:

If You Give A Dog A Shoe
By
Mr. Hancock’s Class

If you give a dog a shoe, he will put it on his nose. Then he will go outside and try to shake the shoe off because it stinks. Then he will chew it up. After he chews it up, he gobbles it up and swallows it.  He will get very, very, very, very sick and will have to go to the vet. After he is done in the doctor’s room, he will come out with his owner and see a orange, bob-cat. He will chase it all over the vet’s office and room knocking everything over. As he chases the cat, the dog will get caught in a cage of books. His owner will put him on a leash so he won’t run away. The dog will then get mad and start to chew off his leash. He will run into the middle of the road. All the cars will brake and smash, bang, boom, together into a huge, massive crash. After, his owner will come over and get very angry and scold him. The dog will find a shoe at the accident and start chewing it. He will throw it up in the air and it will land on his nose.

We will be starting our own stories based on that book starting tomorrow!!! Here is the spelling list for this week:
Spelling M 3

I introduced the students to Spelling City a couple of weeks ago and the response already has been incredible. I had many students bring their certificates in from after their practice and I also had a few parents writing notes stating that their child completed the practice test and got 100%. That was fantastic! Here is the link to this weeks Spelling City list:

I wasn’t able to send out the memory verse this week as our printers were down (though I guess the students could have written them in their planners!). However, the memory verse is below and we will be adding them into their planners tomorrow. I think it is a very good verse and again, it was supplied by one of the students.

Romans 12:21

Do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good.

Finally, I am not sure if you are aware of this but every week, I feature a “Music of the Week”. Each week, I highlight a different style/genre for the students to experience. I try to play some jazz, children’s music, christian, classical, vocal, etc. This week we are featuring the musical, “You’re Good Man, Charlie Brown”. It is a fun musical and the students seem to be really enjoying it. Here is a video from the musical:

Keep watching the blog this week. We have exciting things coming up. Videos, maps, notes and maybe a few cookies!!! Hmmm, keep checking here for all your news, info and fun!!!!

I hope everyone is having a great weekend. I thought I would give you all a little Sunday gift. I found this video last week and the song has been in my head all week. So I thought that you would appreciate it if I shared it with you so we could all have the song in our head!!! It’s not as bad as an ABBA song (and if you don’t know who ABBA is, ask your parents but don’t, I repeat, don’t play any of the songs. You’ll never get them out of your head. I had one song in my head for three weeks. It was not pretty.)

Anyway, here is the song. It is an old childrens folk song sung by Lisa Loeb.

Here is the spelling for this week:

Spelling 01

Here is the link to the spelling activities to go along with the spelling words!

Our memory verse this week, comes from Ephesians 6:1-2

Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. “Honour your father and mother” – which is the first commandment with a promise-

Well, I guess you have been good. Here is a neat video and a song for you!

beep_beep-160 Beep-Beep

Don’t Forget that the Science Challenge Projects are due Monday!!!

Thus ended another busy week (like how I used a spelling word?)! One thing I wanted to say though was how proud I was by how hard the students worked for the Service Day. It was an amazing afternoon. Though I didn’t quite realize how long the walk was actually going to be, the students did an amazing job and hardly complained at all though I am sure they were very tired at the end of the day. It was really inspiring and I was very proud to see how enthusiastic they were and how well they pulled together to gather garbage to help keep Chilliwack clean and spread the message!

We also planted tomatoes yesterday which was a lot of fun. We talked about all sorts of things including learning about the parts of the tomato, how Earth is the same and/or different than Mars (ask your child how old they would be and how much they would weigh on Mars if they lived there!), and started filling out and completing the parts of the experiment. The tomatoes are now in their temporary home for the time being. We will be very interested to see what happens. The students had a little big of a hard time doing their observations of the tomato seed as it is very small and light and kept disappearing. However, we did manage to get all the students to plant one space seed and one regular seed. We don’t know which seed is which (as that is part of the experiment) but the general agreement is that Seeds B are the space ones as they are rougher and pointier than the Seed A group. We shall see. Anyway, it was a lot of fun.

Today was the first big dress rehearsal for The Music Man. It has been a stressful week of rehearsals but I think things have pulled together and it should be a lot of fun. As you may know the students are being joined by Mr. Shinness, Mr. Preston, Mr. Neudorf and myself. It has been a lot of fun learning the songs and singing with the other gentlemen and just being involved in a musical again. I was telling Mr. Shinness that it has been a long time since I have done a musical and being involved in this one was bringing back a lot of memories from my High School productions. Anyway, I found a couple of clips of The Music Man for you to enjoy.

Wow! It’s Thursday already. I haven’t written for awhile. It was a bit of a tough getting over the fact that there was no snow day but we soldiered on.

I didn’t get a chance to write about our field trip on Monday. The students behaved very well. I was very proud of them. We had a great time at Granville Island albeit a little short. The orchestra was a lot of fun and we got to hear a nice mix of composers and musical styles one of my favorite being the Aaron Copland piece, “Fanfare for the Common Man”. Copland writes such quintessential and beautiful music that brings pictures to life.

I created an animoto of our day which you can view below.

In Science today, we saw a neat site as an introduction to constellations. It was a nice guide to how to find Orion’s belt and the north star with the Big Dipper as a guide. It also started talking about Cassiopeia but we are going to wait a bit until we learn about some of the other constellations. The site is called “The Night Sky”. The students found it fun finding the constellations in the sky. Give it a try. We also made star finders but did not get a chance to learn how they worked. Once that is done, I will put the website on the blog so they can download and make their own! Once we have learned about a few constellations, we will be having a constellation party but I am not giving any details about that away yet!!! Ah yes, more SUSPENSE!!!!!! Bu-ha-ha-ha-ha!!!!!

For our problem of the week, we had a bit of a toughy. The question was “A number multiplied by 3 gives 21. The same number added to 21 gives . . .” A.B worked it out though with her usual aplomb and confidence. Here is how she worked it out.

As you may have noticed, there was no spelling list this week and there was no memory verse. Those will be starting again next week. However, we will be having our Mad Minutes. If you would like to practice you can download some pages from the Box.net widget or here (adding) and here (sub).

One of the students asked a good question today about how our Sun could ever destroy the Earth as it is so far away. Luckily, I had just found a news article about a star that is just now in the process of dying. Well, it’s not actually dying right at this instant, as it takes so long for light to reach us from that distance. We are just now seeing the light from that star.

The dying star is actually fairly close to the constellation Orion, which we have been learning about, though the star is further out than the stars that make up the Orion constellation. The star, name Te Leporis, is about 500 light years away. As it dies, it is actually getting bigger. Down below you can actually see what this means. You can see the comparison of the size of the dying star compared to the distance of the Earth from the Sun. The splotch of light underneath is an actual photo of the dying star with the comparison to our Earth and Sun above it.

Amazing!!!

A reminder that Monday is the field trip to Vancouver for the symphony and Granville Market. We will be leaving here at 8:15!!! Students need to wear Full Dress uniforms.

Our music of the week is the incomparable artist, Bobby McFerrin. He is an incredible artist and does almost all his music without instruments. Here are some videos with him, including my favorite, “Blackbird”.

I hope that you were able to enjoy the concert today. The students did a wonderful job and also did a wonderful job listening and sitting respectfully for the rest of the concert.

It is an important day for students to be involved in. I was talking to my students about how my grandfather, who passed away last year, never really talked about the war (Second World War). He kept telling me that it was a terrible time and that he didn’t want to share that experience with me; that it was a sad time where he lost many friends. However, we need to make sure that we never forget this time. In my conversations with the children last week, it was reassuring to hear that many of the students had some understanding of the importance of the day. However, there were some misconceptions and things that needed to be clarified. Having these conversations with students is a very important process and learning experience for children to help ensure that we continue to put a precedence on peace making.

As for the rest of the week, as it is a short week, there will be no spelling or memory verse this week.

This week, (and probably a little next week) I am showcasing a great album as our music of the week. The album is called Hush and it features Bobby McFerrin and Yo-Yo Ma. Yo-Yo Ma is a famous cellist who I got to see live last year. The concert was magnificent. Bobby McFerrin is not someone I have ever got to see live but he is an amazing vocal artist probably best known for “Don’t Worry, Be Happy”. However, most of his work is in the classical area and is a very well known conductor. So I thought I would highlight a couple of songs. One is from the album “Hush”, the other is a song that Bobby McFerrin did live. It is just an amazing song that only he could ever pull off. The last one is his mst well-known one, “Don’t Worry, Be Happy”.

SeeqPod – Playable Search

Lots of stuff happening today!!!!

We started our Oobleck machines today! They are looking really good. Aftre looking at the Oobleck, the students wrote down five important properties of Oobleck. After discussing those properties with the class, each group chose 5 properties that we titled Laws of Oobleck. The five laws we came up with were:

• It melts in your hand sometimes but not always and after it has been used a lot.
• It melts and dries because it was a solid and a liquid
• The liquid evaporates but the other stuff doesn’t
• It hardens in a quick amount of time.
• It hardens when we squish it.

Now that the laws have been established, students are working on designing a vehicle that could move around on the surface of Oobleck and collect specimans to further study Oobleck before it takes over the world!!!

Students also got their first ten spelling words today. I have put the entire list here in the post. If you can’t see the list, you can click on the document in the Box.net widget on the right side under where it says Class Files. If you click on the file, it will give you the option to download it. You can also click spelling-l-1 to download it.

This weekend, the school is holding a golf tournament in support of purchasing more equipment for the playground. The information is as follows:

September 20, 2008 Aquadel Golf Course, 9am Shotgun Start, includes lunch and prizes for all!  Cost $60.00 please purchased tickets at the school office. :

Students also have their first bible verse today. They will need to have these verses memorized for FRIDAY!

The verse is Ephesians 2:10.

“We are God’s Masterpiece. he has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so that we can do the good thinkgs he planned for us long ago.”

I have had lots of great comments about doing the favorite verses as memory verses. I believe it is really affirming to hear how the bible affects people and how each of these special verses speaks to each of us. I also have been reading verses I have not heard before which is great for our growth in studying God’s word.

Finally, I was told that I just have to add some of the songs from the Bungee Jumpin’ Cows on the blog. This group is a band from the States that goes around to schools and sings songs that are science related. They are great fun and I actually met one of them when I went down to take a science course. It was great fun and the kids just loved the CD.

Have a great evening!